PhD in practice _ Art University Linz (AT)
What will design and art pedagogy and practice be beyond our visual concept of an image? This collaborative project aims at exploring the concept of inclusive art and design process as an experience beyond our visual sense. It has a multi sensory approach with translation and reinterpretation of senses as is core artistic and design practice.
This research further explores the concept of an image with an emphasis on sound, texture, and taste. The aim is to normalize and introduce this non-visual concept of images in our daily lives and to sensitize us for the same. This research can be consequently applicable in museums, design and art pedagogy and our lives.
Performance lecture for the lunchtime lecture series at the Kunst Universitat Linz
18th March 2024
The lecture performance explores how we perceive our identity and ourselves in a non -visual context. It further explores the interdependence of our identity with our environment beyond our visual concept of an image, with an emphasis on sound, texture, and taste. According to the Indian metaphysics an entity comes into being only when one is aware of it. No observation exists independently of the observer. In the absence of perception everything is unmannifest”. [1] Does this mean that our mind constantly translates our thoughts in the form of images? If there were no thought would there be no image?
The inception started during my Master’s thesis in December 2020. I approached Jacqueline Egger in September 2019. She lost her eyesight 19 years ago. Her perception is perpetually oscillating in-between her past where she had the sense of sight and her present without it. Unlike me she perceives the world based on her sense of smell, hearing and intuition. She then visited me in Mumbai in March 2023 and we travelled around Mumbai together. We started documenting our travels together in the form of textures, taste, smell and sound. As I explored the city of Mumbai, where I have lived most of my life I realized how much more I could perceive when I walked around the city with her.
Alexandra Horowitz in her book “On Seeing” believes that Bodies do not only smell, they hum and whirr when everything is running smoothly and especially when it is not. [2] The lecture performance has a multi disciplinary approach. I have tried to define my identity through the medium of a sound collage, followed by a monologue. Consequently Jacqueline narrates her version of me and the lecture concludes with a food performance embodying the statement “You live in a city and the city lives in you” The Notebook of a city and its clothes Wim Venders. Can we explore a city and form a mental image of a city based on its soundscapes? Further how can we translate these soundscapes into colour and can I somehow consume a city through its colours? For most of the lecture my video will be turned off… or not……